9 Best Baby Bassinets, Tested by Experts and Parents

After the founder of Halo lost an infant to SIDS he launched the brand with a mission to be sure babies are placed on their back for sleep, in a bedding-free space and ideally close to parents but not in the grown-up bed. The brand's BassiNest can swivel over your adult bed, making lifting your baby out for a midnight nursing sesh or sunrise cuddle a lot easier. The mesh wall bends down, which makes scooping out your baby easier on your back.

This newest version is lighter (the original was heavy!) and now the top can lift off its base so you can use the basket for naps in other rooms. The BassiNest works best next to a mattress that is at least four and a half inches off the floor and no higher than 30 inches. If you want to use them, there are two levels of vibration and four calming sounds to help your baby fall asleep. An earlier version won a Good Housekeeping Parenting Award, and the Halo Sleepsack is our choice for best overall swaddle blanket.

This comes with a mattress but Halo now sells a fully washable mattress upgrade for about $70.

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This winner of a Good Housekeeping's Parenting Award is affordable and electronics-free. You could use the My Crib in your home (and save a lot of money) or use it for travel, or both. It folds down to smaller than half its regular size, goes into a carry bag that's included and might even fit in a piece of checked luggage.

Like most modern bassinets, the sides of this are mesh for airflow. Unlike many of the big pieces of furniture, this only weighs 12 pounds by itself. While it's not on wheels, it's light and the sides lock so it's easy to move around your room. Many new parents posting in Reddit forums say they don't want to spend a lot of money on a bassinet that they'll only use for a few months, so we like this as a low-cost option that doesn't require you to take someone's hand-me-down. This would also be great for any second house that you visit frequently, such as a grandparent's place.

Unzip and unroll the side wall and attach this sleeper to your adult bed using the included straps if you want easiest access to your infant. Six adjustable height positions accommodate most adult beds between 19 and 25 inches high.

The legs tuck underneath the bed and the two wheels can be locked to keep the sleeper in place, making this what some people call a "co-sleeper" because it's so easy to reach your baby from your own bed. Or you can keep the bassinet wall up and the bassinet can simply sit near your bed without being attached with straps.

The Whisper has a higher weight capacity — 30 pounds — than most others. Choose from several colors and patterns including pink stripes and navy camo. There are no sound or motion features with this one, which helps keep the price down (and some parents feel that eventually helps their baby transition to a traditional crib).

The Food and Drug Administration approved the Snoo as a baby sleep product that keeps babies on their back while they sleep. It was designed by pediatrician Harvey Karp, M.D., whose "five S's" for soothing a baby are now bedrock parenting advice: swaddling, shushing, swinging, sucking (like on a pacifier) and side/stomach (a way of holding your newborn). After writing The Happiest Baby on the Block Dr. Karp designed the SNOO to automatically respond with soothing motions and a shushing sound when your baby cries.

The SNOO smart bassinet connects to an app and gives you a nightly sleep report. It comes with a swaddle that attaches to the bassinet bed to keep your baby safely in a back-lying position. "The SNOO doesn’t change the fact that you’ll still wake up for midnight feedings," says Lexie Sachs, Good Housekeeping Institute executive director of strategy and operations who used the product with her two daughters. "It does, however, prevent non-hungry wakings, and it cuts down the time it takes to get your child back to sleep once a feeding is done."

The main pain point is the price. If it helps, know that there's a 30-day risk-free trial period. There are also increasing opportunities to rent a SNOO. You'll want to set your SNOO up near an outlet and plug it in to enjoy all of the features.

READ OUR FULL REVIEW: Why We Think the SNOO Bassinet Is Worth It

This modern bassinet has a focus on design and storage and can tuck in next to your bed without being very obtrusive. Though it's hardly mini — it's long, but a few inches more narrow than others — we do like it for small spaces. Our Lab experts like the sturdy metal frame and wood trim, and say the sheet that it comes with is softer than most. A storage shelf underneath can hold burp cloths, spare pajamas, pacifiers and anything else you might need in the middle of the night.

Adjust this to any of four heights and slide the top closer or further away from your bed as needed. The high mesh sides that add to the feeling of safety and security, but because they don't flex, you will have to bend over to scoop your infant out.

The Iora is engineered to fold flat and fit into a carry bag, which is included, so it can be portable. That also makes it possible to store it under your bed during the day if needed. But the bassinet weights 26 pounds, so you're not going to want to carry it around often. Its heaviness does contribute to its sturdiness, though, so ultimately we like it as a bedside sleeper that generally stays in your bedroom except for occasional travel.

Engineers at 4Moms have researched how parents move and sway while holding a baby, and incorporated natural soothing motions into this bedside bassinet.

To find the motion that is closest to what you do with your baby, download the 4Moms app and hit "find my roo." Cradle the phone in your arms while you bop or sway and it gives you a suggested setting — our tester got "tree swing speed 1" and "wave speed 1." In addition, this bassinet can mimic the motion a baby might feel while riding in the car, which is as popular as you might imagine. Each motion has five speeds and the bassinet can play four kinds of white noise.

Some online reviewers report difficulties pairing the bassinet to a phone via Bluetooth. Fortunately the controls can also be accessed on the bassinet itself. Others say that though the bassinet can stay in motion for four hours, longer than most bassinets, that still requires them to reset it sometime in the night. Finally, long-term users say it can start to squeak or thump over time. All that said, many parents report that the MamaRoo Sleep Bassinet improves the overall quality of sleep in their house at an under-$500 pricepoint.

It was only a matter of time before a company created a SNOO-ish smart bassinet that can sense cries for a lower price. Graco Sense2Snooze has what the company calls "cry detection technology." You plug it in, and then sound from your crying baby activates the bassinet to start rocking to soothe them back to sleep. There's also a nightlight and a menu of some 20 sounds, including a heartbeat and songs.

Experiment with the speed of the rocking and the different sounds to find what your baby likes best, then set those to be the default. Graco also has a preset soothing mode that you can rely on if you prefer. This is not app-connected like the SNOO or the 4Moms bassinet, and playing with the menu of buttons, which make a click when you push them, occasionally feels like you're trying to code a program in an effort to please your baby. But it does work as promised — it reliably kicks on when your baby cries.

Some will like the little light-blocking canopy that gives this an old-fashioned profile, but it can be removed if you want it to look more modern. We appreciate the wheels on one side that make this easier to move around and we like the storage pockets.

Bassinets generally function as a bedside sleeper for five or six months and then you're through. We love that this one turns into a changing table when your baby outgrows using it as an infant sleeper. This is also the easiest bassinet to move around — the only one on our list with four wheels plus a handle that allows you to shift it into place. Practically speaking, this means you can take this along with you to have your baby nap in other rooms, though we feel it's too heavy (33 pounds) to cart up and down stairs.

The Close to You is very adjustable; the height of the top can be set anywhere between 24 and 33.5 inches from the floor, which means it can easily hover over a very low or fairly high bed. The battery-operated electronics provide six songs, vibrations and a nightlight, and you'll want three AA batteries for that. Some online reviewers complain that the batteries run down fast and some say the vibration feature conked out on their bassinet.

When you're ready for this to be a changing table you reverse the mattress to a waterproof side and can add the diaper caddy, sold separately. As a changer it can hold a toddler up to 35 pounds so it's useful up until potty training.

Expecting two? This functions much the way the regular BassiNest does, but is double-wide to accommodate infant twins. Twin babies are obviously used to being close together, which is why it's so nice to give them a shared bassinet. This provides a mesh wall between them, so they can see each other and interact without smushing into each other and waking each other up or causing any worry that one baby will get themselves on top of the other.

Like with the Halo for singletons, our best overall choice, the top can rotate toward an adult bed. On this, the walls on each side can bend down so a parent can easily get a baby out for feeding or soothing. This model comes with a nightlight, vibrations and several soothing sounds and lullabies, which all run on ‎three AA batteries. It's heavy, a little more than 45 pounds once assembled, so you'll want to just leave it set up next to your bed.